Developing Evangelical Women as Leaders: CPAS and AWESOME

by Elisabeth Goddard

Rosie Ward is Leadership Development Advisor at the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS). CPAS had noticed that there were relatively few women applying for the Arrow Leadership Programme developed and spearheaded by James Laurence and which Rosie now co-leads. Their department also saw that women either weren't applying for jobs (particularly the larger churches) and/or weren't being appointed. So Rosie's job was born. She has a particular brief for developing women as leaders, including encouraging vocations among women and raising the profile of women in the application process for traditional evangelical posts.

As part of her job Rosie has written her latest book ‘Growing women leaders: nurturing women’s leadership in the church’ which is due to be published in September 2008. This topic brings important insights into our understanding of the developing role of women in leadership in our churches from an evangelical perspective.

Connecting with her CPAS role, Rosie is also Membership Secretary on the Committee of Awesome, of which I am the Chair. AWESOME (‘Anglican Women Evangelicals: Supporting Our Ordained Ministry’) is a network for ordained women who are Anglican and evangelical where they can meet with other like-minded women for support and encouragement in their gospel ministries.

Like many other ordained women I prefer to get on with things without worrying about which sex I am - in fact I rarely think about it. Yet I have found myself led into this ministry as I have discovered more and more women for whom being evangelical is a problem, who feel acutely isolated and need to discover that there are others out there like them. It is crucial to help people realise that a woman in ordained ministry is not by definition liberal. It is crucial for the women themselves to see that there are others doing this job and doing it well - women who are passionate about the gospel, who place themselves clearly under the Word and who are clear that God has called them just as he has called their male colleagues.

We are finding that younger women want to be mentored by older women with experience of ministry, just as happens among men. Yet they are so often left to sink or swim. The churches from which they come are often led by men who carefully mentor the men they sponsor but fear to be similarly involved with the women.

When these (often highly gifted, godly and competent) women come to look for curacies they meet excuses like 'we can't have a woman curate because of the risk of adultery', or 'our vicar's wife covers the women so we need a male curate'. As a result many female evangelical ordinands find themselves in non-evangelical parishes for their training, or are forced to take a ‘Non-Stipendary Ministry’ appointment, supported by their husbands (something which rarely, if ever, happens to men) or both. Consequently they find themselves outside the 'fold' in terms of knowledge, training, experience and connections. They become reticent to apply for, or unable to get, an evangelical incumbency and are consistently viewed with doubt by their natural constituency. Awesome is one way to encourage women like this to be earthed and held within the constituency, encouraged to 'remain evangelical' and not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, even though they may feel that they themselves have been thrown out and rejected at times.

There seems to be an unspoken assumption, even amongst those churches which would say that they were pro-women's ordination, that somehow you need an Alpha male to lead a large Evangelical church, which may say more about the type of leadership model we have bought into than anything else. In many ways Awesome is not so much about women as about evangelicalism... But maybe in our current climate we can't separate the two?

And so to the Awesome conference, which is really loved by many as an opportunity to get away, to re-connect, to learn from one another, to discover what God is doing through other women on fire for God throughout the country and - and this is vital - to rest. This year the conference, ‘Inspire: refreshed for Mission’ is focusing on evangelism, the speakers will be Sue Hope and Yvonne Richmond, both ordained, both doing exciting and innovative work. All attendees will be asked to bring with them something that they have found helpful in mission, either something they have written themselves or a resource they have used. We will have a dynamic and creative time looking at how we do mission in lots of different contexts. But above all we will relax, re-charge our batteries and celebrate what God is doing, by His Holy Spirit through all sorts of gifted, remarkable women all over our land and go home inspired for the Gospel.

Already we have seen women re-connect with their roots, we pray for more. I never in a million years expected to be involved in a group like this, it just wasn't on my radar, but it was on God's, and it is clearly very much needed. Do please pray for us and for Rosie Ward and for this very important work.

The Revd Elisabeth Goddard is Chair of Awesome and a member of the leadership team of Fulcrum

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